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Have any of you noticed that when you engage in confessing compulsions you often feel like you have to re-confess because you feel like or realized you left something out. Or that this just starts a landslide of confessing?

Hey! I am really struggling with pocd and I have EXTREME guilty because I feel like I should told my partner about this. Especially because I had really awful thought about his little brother. I have really high anxiety because of this and he can see that I am not feeling well because I am crying all the time. I am just so scared he is gonna leave me if I tell him about this even he says that he is not going to. I am going to broke down so badly if he does that and to be honest I don’t think that I will made it if this really does happen. Still I feel this extremely guilty feeling if I don’t tell him..

Last night I was driving and saw a pedestrian at night while trying to make a right turn, i noticed I still had time to go before they crossed the street so I made my turn. For some reason, I thought to myself what if I hit that pedestrian with my car and didn’t notice? Once I got home I couldn’t sleep so I went back to check the intersection to see if maybe there was an ambulance/police but there wasn’t. I’m so scared

Someone who was sick made food for me but I didn't eat it because they were sick but I don't want to waste the food because that would be disrespectful as they took their time to make it. I just don't want to take the risk of eating it and then getting sick. I hate getting sick. I don't know what to do about this.

Im just wondering but does anyone else deal with repetitive thoughts and or urges. Recently I’ve been wanting to listen to music but I can’t stop listening to this certain song that’s kinda depressing and I sometimes will have it on loop for hours while I’m worrying about things but I can’t bring myself to listen to another song. Idk what to do, like its a good song but it makes my mental health worse if I obsess over it. Any suggestions on how to handle this? I hope everyone’s having a good day and best of luck to all of you ❤️

Does anyone have any tips on how to get a full nights rest? I had a pretty good afternoon/evening yesterday, yet still found myself waking up every 2-3 hours with anxious thoughts. Also I have this horrible chest pain in the morning, that usually takes me a while to shake. Not sure if that’s contributing to my lack of sleep.

Does anyone find tiktoks about being ‘realising’ they are gay or coming out later in life really triggering? I have SO-OCD and seeing those things makes me question everything so deeply. How do you cope with this please.

Okay, here we go… it’s a lot 😆 and some things might work and other won’t so you have to try it out and see how it goes: -Drink more water/stay hydrated, -Minimum 7 hours of sleep per night, Get on a daily and nightly routine (as in you have a schedule and you go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time unless sick or on holiday), -Cut back on or completely cut out sugar and carbs and focus more on protein, healthy fats, and veggies, -Go outside for at least 30 minutes a day, -Exercise every day or every other day. This includes weight lifting and cardio and stretching, -Pick up a hobby or two (or more!) that can be done with others and by yourself, -Check out Yoga with Adriene on YouTube for free yoga content, -Check out either the Calm app or Insight Timer app for meditations ( 20 minutes per day as the end goal but start with 5 minutes and work your way up. It WILL take time), -Practice mindfulness all day, every day. And this is a life long process, -Seek out therapy (also for life), -Medication if it works for you, -Look into grounding techniques for when things get hard, -Spend more time with loved ones (it does not have to be blood related if you have abusive family members).

I’m really struggling right now with an obsession over my partner’s voice. It probably is slightly rooted in truth because my partner does have a more high pitched and nasally/whine to his voice, but I think I’ve become hyper aware and hyper sensitive of it. Now I keep playing over everything he says in my mind. if I think it sounded whiny or odd in some way. And I don’t know what to do. I like him a lot and I really don’t want to be obsessing about this. I don’t want it to bother or annoy me. I just want to love him for him. But everywhere I look it seems to be that people suggest others to just leave. I don’t want to do that. I just want to stop being bugged or turned off by his voice. I don’t want to obsess over it. I don’t even know if this is ROCD. I wish I could fix this.

Has anyone read the article in the Guardian yesterday by Rose Cartwright? It basically says OCD is not a medical condition in the brain but the brain is formed by trauma in childhood. So I guess she means deal with the trauma and the intrusive thoughts stop? I have had therapy for many years have dealt with my traumas but it never helped my anxiety and intrusive thoughts. 🤷‍♀️ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/13/i-was-the-poster-girl-for-ocd-then-i-began-to-question-everything-id-been-told-about-mental-illness?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It might just be the opposite of what I fear; it might just be OCD. The whole thing about being uncertain of something that you're not willing to tolerate not knowing is a sign of how distressed you are by it. Having uncertainty and obsessing and worrying about not being certain about something should be self-reassuring because it means that you're wondering and thinking painfully about an issue that many wouldn't even question or doubt themselves within; it bothers you and it scares you. It suggests that you're clearly not what you fear the most. All this time, you thought that in order to not be a monster, you should never even notice and think about these scary and disturbing things in the first place. But maybe the fact itself that you're obsessing about this bothering stuff, trying to figure it out, confirms that you're the furthest thing away from being that monster. Not wanting to be is an enough answer. All the things that are triggering us daily, are just tests in which we have to always recognise when we're about to ruminate and pull ourselves out of it, and thinking it as a chance and a challenge to practice exposure and response prevention.

So today I was typing a message on my phone and my boyfriend is playful sometimes and likes to try and get on my nerves a little bit, so he started tapping on the screen and I pushed his hand away (maybe a little too aggressively) and said “stop it.” I was getting genuinely annoyed so I walked across the room where he followed me and then started playfully hitting my arm. I said stop and he did it a couple more times then stopped and at that point I was already overthinking (abuse is a common obsession for me; sometimes I’ll even get painful sensations for a long time after in the places he barely touched me) and started asking reassurance questions like “why were you hitting me?” etc. He said I was hitting back, which tbh I don’t even remember if I was—I don’t think I was—and basically just tried to calm me down. We’ve been dating for over 3 years, so he’s very familiar with the way I act and things I say when I’m obsessing. It’s just stressing me out so much, we play fight all the time and I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me, but I have a really hard time trusting him and my brain just ticks every time something like this comes up.

I have been going over how my ocd will affect a future relationship. The things I struggle with in my OCD is cleaning and contamination. There are times where when I feel at my worst, I have to wash any cooking or eating utensil/dish/pan/pot multiple times. I think the max amount of times I have washed a single bowl alone in one wash is 17 times. That's just a bowl. I also when cleaning use gloves that they use at doctor's offices and/or hospitals. It helps me to feel like I won't need to wash or complete a compulsion(s). So my question is would I be enabling myself or no because I am constantly going over in my head what I should be doing or not being doing and it's always so exhausting.

Because I’m travelling I’ve started taking a lot of photos and I’ve made the decision to make a hobby of it. Coincidentally I want to take photos of street people but feel rude or guilty about exploiting them. My solution is to give them money or food and ask for a photo in return. This crosses the line between begging and paid modelling work. Everybody is happy and the photos will even highlight their situation. I’ve wanted to do good work here since I arrived but didn’t want to feel like a mug. Here is my first photo of a lady that asked for money at the bus stand. She was a natural.

I’ve fallen into another on going episode of OCD one of my worst ones, this happens often where I’ll be in remission for about a month or so then my OCD flares up for a couple months. My most reoccurring form of OCD is relationship OCD though I suffer from others as well. My overthinking about my girlfriend and our relationship is tormenting my mind. She’s a wonderful woman and my thoughts my horrible thoughts have been making our time together insufferable but not to her but to me, normally I love being around her and even going through this I adore her and want to always be with her, I keep my thoughts to myself for the most part but she notices that I’m not ok but I can’t tell her what I’m thinking cuz I don’t want to make her feel like I just think she’s horrible or not loyal to me. She is and she loves me very much and does her best to ease my mind. I just feel like such a problem and my thoughts drive me crazy I literally hold my head and cry just wanting the thoughts to stop they flood my mind unintentionally and cause me great emotional pain…I wanted to just end myself today to just be done with it.. but ik she’d be crushed if I did, that’s all that’s keeping me alive. My mind is my biggest enemy and I can’t silence it. Please help anyone I don’t care if you think I’m overreacting I probably am just please how do I make them stop? How can I stay alive…

I’ve been having constant delusional thoughts about my family not being my family or being swapped somehow. It started out as very existential what ifs as well as me just in general being delusional or schizophrenic but has now actually moved into delusional thinking. It really scares me because my brain will start to look for proof that it’s true when I’m constantly trying to logic my way out of it. I get thoughts like “what if your family are skin walkers” and my brain will try to find a reason why unwillingly, and then I will fight that thought. And when I do that it will find the deepest delusional thought to combat that rational thought. Like I’ll see something and get a crazy thought “what if that’s a warning or sign that your family is not your family” “what if that thought was put in your head” “what if none of your thoughts are yours” or something insane along those lines, and it can truly feel like it could be happening but I still know deep down it’s not. Like I know there are a million logical explanations for why it isn’t true but my mind wants to stick to the worst thing imaginable. It’s like my brain is forcing me to find a reason on why it could be true, and making bizzare connections, when I just know in my core it’s not. I fear that I’m developing schizophrenia. I just don’t understand why there is a part of me that is considering this as a possibility when I know it’s not? Even when I say I know I can’t feel that feeling of knowing. It also almost feels like I am forcing myself to write normally, like I question if I’m just in denial and am just coping with this being true or something. I saw a psychiatrist and told me he believes it’s OCD, but I sometimes just don’t understand why these thoughts can get so deep. I truly feel like I’m insane. Like I’m aware of my own paranoia or psychosis.

I used to have big dreams of being a professional dancer in NYC. It didn’t really matter to me what style. I danced for about nine years, ages 9-17 (almost 18). Nearly half of those years were competitive, with around 2-3 classes a day, 4 days a week. I wasn’t the best in my class considering 9-10 is still pretty late to start dance. I had thicker thighs and flat feet, but I worked my absolute ass off to try and make that dream happen. I did ballet, pointe, contemporary/modern, jazz, and hip hop. I think I was too afraid to go all in when it came time to graduate. I didn’t have the best home life, so I was desperate to leave my dad’s house ASAP. Dancing was put aside while I ended up going to cosmetology school and briefly becoming an esthetician as a way to support myself enough to leave home at 18. I always thought I could come back to dance later, that I could still make my dreams come true in some capacity. From 18-20, I worked as an esthetician for 12 hours a day, 4 days a week. I did some ballet classes here and there, but not nearly enough to maintain what I’d learned throughout the years. Even with 3 days off, I was burned out and exhausted. I wanted to do fun young people things. I moved in with my girlfriend. My mental health started suffering. Then Covid hit. From 20-22 got comfortable with the isolation and staying home that Covid brought. I didn’t know about online dance classes or anything then. Then from 22-24, even though lockdowns were lifted, my mental health was at an all time low. Constant obsessing, ruminating, reassurance seeking, finding new reasons to hate myself. Hundreds of days just lost to Google. I wasn’t even thinking about dance. I accepted that I failed. And now I’m 24. I will be 25 in July. I’m employed part time as a pet caretaker, and it has hit me that I threw away the one thing that I was truly passionate about. My childhood dream. It’s been nearly 7 years since I danced on a stage. I live in NYC, just like little me wanted. I have just signed up for some low level ballet classes. But all I ever wanted was to be a professional dancer, and now that will never happen because 24 is “too old” to start as a professional. Even though I have about 9 years of experience, I wasn’t the best in my class. I was always behind. But I put my entire heart and soul into it because I knew in my heart it’s what I wanted. I know I can still dance for fun, but that isn’t really what I want. I want to perform onstage. I want people to see me. I want to be talented and recognized. But I threw that all away for the chance to get away from my parents and stew in my mental illness. I have been ruminating all day. I wish I could make my dream come true. But I feel like I just need to accept that it won’t happen no matter how hard I try. I’m nearly retirement age in dance years. There is really no other career I want. I just want to cry. Sorry for the rant. Don’t give up on your dreams please. Don’t be like me.

i was at a rehearsal yesterday and i got super afraid of hurting someone for no reason. i wish i could tell someone, but i don’t know how to get them to understand that i don’t want to and i truly won’t? it’s really scary and i can’t really isolate because i’m around other people. instead i just start feeling terribly icky, if you know what mean. like my own skin shouldn’t be touching me. i feel horrible for thinking about any of it.

I can’t even tell if my intrusive thoughts are real or not. Sometimes I feel like I want the thoughts or am just in denial and some of the actions I’ve done in my past, I can’t forgive myself for. I have Real Event OCD and I can’t forgive myself for my mistakes. I hate myself so much. I hate feeling like such a bad person all the time. My themes have also continuously switched and it feels like I have a new theme every few months. I’m so done with this and I don’t know what to do.